Is it Legal and Ethical?

The until-now little-known scheme of refinancing school district bond debts for capital expenditure and refunding the difference to the districts known as “cash out” is being challenged in court by a local group, Citizens for School Bond Accountability, chaired by Jill B. Escher. They have exposed that the San Jose Unified School District is skimming the difference created by lowering interest rates through refinancing the 1997 Measure C bonds in 2005, earmarking the considerable sum of $20.4 million for new projects rather than returning it to the taxpayers.

The 28 percent hike in garbage rates for single-family homes approved by the San Jose City Council by a vote of 8-2 on Tuesday seems to have been a very unpopular move. The increase averages about $5.65 per month, raising the current rate from $20.15 to $25.80 for about 55 percent of the city’s residents. (Putting it into perspective, the increase equals about 20 miles’ worth of gas in one of those jumbo SUVs that can be seen with the naked eye from the moon or an iceberg lettuce side salad at an average overpriced Silicon Valley restaurant.)

This past Sunday, I attended a wonderful concert sponsored by South India Fine Arts (SIFA) at the Center for Employment Training auditorium on Vine Street. Part of a weekend of events celebrating the arts of southern India, the concert presented Chitra Visweswaran, one of the greatest living Indian Bharatanatyam dancers, with a group of master carnatic musicians, led by her husband, R. Visweswaran, on vocals. To sum it up in one word, the performance was sublime.

For those of you who think creating modern art doesn’t require dedication, you should take a look at the exhibition of works by Korean artist Il Lee (“Ballpoint Abstractions”) currently on display at the San Jose Museum of Art. You will be amazed. I did not know that such intense, focused dedication was possible. Why do I say that? Lee’s work is produced by scribbling on paper and canvas with a ballpoint pen—weeks, months and years of scribbling, millions upon millions of scribbles placed just where he wants them to create his intended visual effects.

With a clear mandate from the voters and armed with his popular reform agenda, Mayor Reed dragged the old-guard San Jose City Council Members by their hair to a unanimous vote authorizing the taking of the first baby steps toward ending the excesses of the Gonzales era. That’s more than a full measure of ifs, ands and buts, I know, but could this really be the beginning of the beginning of the end of the eight year free-for-all? Is our council going to go back through the looking glass without some kicking, screaming or scheming? If these reforms are going to work, every single member of the council has to voluntarily follow them to the letter. Excuse me if I think this may be a bit overoptimistic.

Like everyone else in San Jose, I have been following the controversy over the government’s mishandling of the friendly-fire killing of local football hero Pat Tillman with mounting incredulity. If a family with the profile and PR horsepower of the Tillmans can’t get the truth from the government, think what it must be like for the 3,300 other families of dead American soldiers. Will the exposure of the lies told to the Tillman family have any effect on the rest of America, sitting in front of our radio and TV newscasts that endlessly repeat the talking points of the White House and Pentagon snow jobs that pass for information these days?

It comes as no surprise that a recent survey conducted by Menlo Park think tank SRI International found that 89 percent of California’s schools do not meet state standards for arts education. Most of them, including the schools in the San Jose Unified School District, don’t even come close. While the immediate problem is a woeful lack of funding—a pitiful $15 per student annually at present—the underlying problem is that many parents and those who administer the state’s school system lack an understanding of the merits of a comprehensive arts education program.

I usually don’t give more than a passing glance at news about the trials and tribulations of the giant roulette wheel on Wall Street. The hollow ring of their dog-ate-my-homework excuses for dips in market values, like the reasons dreamed up by the PR departments of the oil companies to explain the rise in gas prices while the price of a barrel of oil goes down, just never seem quite credible. However, the excuses given for the recent market falls—turmoil in the mortgage “industry” and the overvalued real estate market—caught my attention because of a local story in the Mercury News on Sunday.

People do not drive nearly as well as they used to in California. That’s a fact. Stand at the intersection of Market and Santa Clara Streets for ten minutes and you will see ten obvious violations at a minimum. In nearly every light cycle, someone will run a red light, another will illegally turn through a crosswalk full of pedestrians and nearly everyone going north on Market is speeding. There is a widespread lack of common courtesy, common sense and common decency among drivers these days.

San Jose’s best annual event began its 17th year last night at the California Theatre with a Bay Area premiere showing of Indian director Mira Nair’s “The Namesake,” from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. This was quite a coup for our film festival as Nair’s previous film, “Vanity Fair,” starring Reese Witherspoon and former Cinequest honoree Gabriel Byrne, got a big Hollywood-blowout release. The filmmakers were on hand at the opening gala afterward.

Finally, our new mayor and city council have listened to the voices of San Jose’s citizens and neighborhood leaders and set budget priorities for the coming year that are in accordance with the wishes of the vast majority. In a meeting on Tuesday, the mayor, council members and their staffs made a commitment to funding the items most often mentioned on this site and in the neighborhoods. These break down into roughly three areas: public safety, public works infrastructure, and public recreational services.

For those of you who think that nothing of interest or importance ever happens in San Jose, take a wander around the San Jose Museum of Art’s current exhibitions. It’s impossible not to enjoy this fascinating local show of works by M.C. Escher and some of the seminal artists from the Op Art era. Judging by the large crowds I witnessed there over the weekend, these exhibitions are very popular and are bringing locals and visitors here alike, proving once again that our museum is a vital part of life in San Jose and the region.

When I read that the San Francisco Symphony plans to come to San Jose on October 5 and play a free concert in Chavez Plaza, I jumped for joy. They are also increasing their number of performances at the Flint Center next season by adding three family concerts, and the symphony’s Youth Orchestra will present Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” in the California Theater on December 15. This is exactly the type of regional approach that we need to take here in Bay Area. How lucky we are to have our neighboring world-class orchestra coming here to play an absolutely free concert for our community and picking up the $100,000 tab themselves.

The San Jose Water Co. supplies 1 million residents in San Jose and nearby communities from the Lexington Reservoir in the Santa Cruz Mountains. They own more than 1,000 acres of the watershed between the reservoir and Summit Road where they have stated it is their intention to start a vigorous logging operation. Their plan is to divide the area into nine sections and log one section per year on a rotating basis, removing 40 percent of all trees with a circumference of more than 24 inches. They equate this with “brush clearing” and assert that it is being done to cut down on fire danger. A one-hundred-foot-tall redwood is pretty big brush!

We seem to spend a lot of time on this site bemoaning the fact that San Jose is perceived as a second-class member of the “ten largest cities in the U.S.” club (we don’t get the big convention or we don’t get the big team). Why? In a blog earlier this week, some cynic even compared San Jose to Toledo and Omaha. The comparison might be apt if we were surrounded by the vacuum of the prairie, but we aren’t.

I would like to start by taking a different direction in the budget debate and bring up the matter of saving money at City Hall through conservation and converting San Jose into a green city fit for the 21st century. With a $3 billion budget, even a fragment of 1 percent saved would be a lot of money that could be used for other purposes. I know that steps have been taken in this direction, but a lot more could be done. Every city function should be regularly reviewed and monitored to reach and maintain maximum efficiency. I see lots of gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups with the city logo driving around. They should be replaced by hybrids or other alternative fuel vehicles as they wear out. All city buildings, works and public transportation should be converted to take advantage of modern technological innovations in cleaner, alternative power. The airport takes a huge portion of our budget and it should lead the way in conservation and green conversion. San Jose should actively set an example for our citizens and other cities around the country. This is the center of world technology. Let’s use it and show what it can do!